[Mike Warmels]

I work for a client who has chosen to work exclusively on FCPX. They have an editing bay with 10 suits working with SAN. That’s quite the adventure itself.

I myself work on my own system, on a MacPro Trashcan I bought to be able to work properly on FCPX. (Avid still runs excellently on my old MacPro as well as on the new one). So we exchange libraries and I work on copies of media they have on their SAN. So when I start finishing rough cuts into final cuts we go into one of their suits. And after that, they export the cuts for audio mixing and broadcast masters.

And then there’s a group of editors that get hired to work there, also work for a post-production facility that works on FCPX. With about five or six suits, on MAcPro trashcans and SAN.

But… the issues I run into, they also run into. Even a lot of fellow directors of mine working on all kinds of Apple machines (MBP, iMac etc) experience sluggishness etc. Even though my cuts are much closer to a finished product than theirs. So I do try to cut everything as well as I can, including split edits, overshoots, graphics, preliminary color correction, music pre-mix, SFX, the lot… So I use a lot of the tools. But… it’s nothing uber complicated. I’ve done this collaborative process for years, on AVID and FCP7. But it’s never felt so hard as with FCPX.

[Mike Warmels]

Actually, I was referring to a music track where left and right ended up separated. But in the clip Robin just displayed there seems to be something you can do to prevent that.

[Mike Warmels]

Nice video. But again, this isn’t really representative for the shows I do. It’s like 30 minutes with lot of different audio mike tracks, music, SFX etc etc. Now the source material for the dialogue is sometime between 4 and 8 tracks. Once you overlap audio to make a nice seamless cut, I’d imagine that would be at least 2x 8 tracks stacked.

In this video I can’t really see how you can switch off particular tracks from the clip in X2Prp. Someone told me that’s possible, but I can’t see it here. The editors do switch it off in Inspector, but apparently X2Pro still exports all 8 tracks. Now again: I haven’t done this myself, but this is how I imagine sound editors end up with an exuberant amount of audio tracks: stacks and stacks of 8 tracks of the source material. While often you end up using three or four if you’d be selecting them.

But I’ll look up some more extensive X2Pro tutorials, not the ones with very simple sequences. The problem is not that it’s not exporting, it’s that exporting way too much.

[Mike Warmels]

Well, only that 15+ FCPX editors, a bunch of media managers and a couple of sound engineers have been trying to figure out how to get a clean timeline for months. Obviously it’s not so clear cut. These are not stupid people.

But maybe there are some particular things they fail to see, I dunno. What we do see is that a lot of tracks that are not actually used in the cuts do get transferred to the sound edit stations and that role name don’t always match with the content as they are in FCPX.

And it’s so nice, that you’re acting a little condescending. I don’t think I gave any cause for that. I know you love FCPX and everything. All I’m trying to get to is feel the same love for it. I don’t expect you to love AVID, even though I often hear people complain about AVID about things that can be done a lot simpler or faster than they make it out to be. Maybe it’s all about getting to know the intricacies of these NLE’s. And in case of FCPX, that’s why I am here: to learn, to understand why things are not working well (while it’s apparently all perfect with others) and what I can do to make it better. But to act like FCPX is God’s gift to mankind is overstating the value of this NLE. It has bugs, it’s not really finished and you need to learn a lot of workarounds.

[Mike Warmels]

XD-Cam mostly. Or audio recorded separately on the audio mixer (up to eight tracks usually). Depending on the project.

Yeah, it’s not rocket science or anything. But for some reason 15 FCPX editors and a bunch of media managers can’t figure out how to get clean and simple AAF’s out of the door.

We did them for years in AVID and the AFF just gets exported with what you actually use in the cut, with handle lengths. And what you see in Protools or Nuendo looks identical to what the editors made in AVID.

I just wish I’d know how to include a pic in here and I could show you.

[Mike Warmels]

Well, there may be the problem right there.

Of course they assign all the roles. And Nuendo and Protools can read them allright, but often they don’t match the roles they have in FCPX. Music tracks are assigned as “Dialogue” all of a sudden. Or left and right tracks are very far apart (one on track 2 and the other on track 46). Plus they have the trouble of LOTS of tracks. Tracks you don’t use in editing or even switch off, but it gets sent to the sound editing suite anyway. Often caused by split edits (and working with 8 tracks per audio clip, the stack gets pretty high very quickly).

Now, I am just relaying stuff here I see editors and sound editors struggling with. I don’t make AAF’s in FCPX (or X2Pro) to be accurate. But I do see what ends up in the sound editing software.

That being said… I do think FCPX would benefit greatly if you could make the AFF IN FCPX, where only the actual audio used gets exported.

[Mike Warmels]

Did you make ten DIFFERENT projects? Or nine DUPLICATES?

Because it seems the duplicates are what’s causing the delays. When I move them to different events, the sluggishness disappears.

[Mike Warmels]

Well, I don’t make the AAF’s myself. All I get is the complaints from the sound editors (when I come in to check the mix or direct narrative work) and the FCPX editors. I’d really like to help them out and figure out what the trick is to make them work so neatly. Because what Tom is showing is exactly how the AAF’s look if we make them from AVID (without third party software).

And if you want to discover something new, try FCPX. Or AVID. Or Premiere… Or… iMovie on the iPhone (that’s pretty neat, in fact). FCP7 is over and done with.

[Mike Warmels]

IF I’d know how to add a picture in here, I’d show what our AAF’s look like from X2Pro…

[Mike Warmels]

Plus… he sends it to Logic.

I don’t know any sound editors that work on Logic. It’s either ProTools or Nuendo.